The invisible loneliness of priests' lives

Published: 21 January 2014

A British priest was found dead in his car after three days. What does this say about the lives of Catholic clergy? asks Christopher Lamb in The Tablet.

The story of a 42-year-old priest found dead in his car outside a supermarket near Luton in outer London earlier this month is sad enough. What makes it even sadder is that it appears to have taken three days for his body to be found.

While we do not yet know the circumstances of Fr Joseph Williams’ death – it is understood he died of natural causes – the fact he was undiscovered for that period of time says something about the life of the single, celibate priest.

His bishop, Peter Doyle, said of the incident: 'I think it makes people feel guilty that we didn't look or that we didn't find him, but it was unavoidable and it's just one of those things.'

Had he been married or living in community could Fr Williams’ going missing been spotted earlier? Today, most clergy live on their own, often in large presbyteries that were built for groups of priests.

It is hard not to imagine the single cleric experiencing pangs of loneliness when he closes the door at the end of the day.

Bishop John Crowley, Cardinal Basil Hume’s former private secretary, recalled that Cardinal Hume, who had spent most of his life as a monk of Ampleforth, had been miserable on his first Christmas day as Archbishop of Westminster.

'When all the public duties were over and everyone else had gone home to family or simply disappeared from view, he wandered across to the upper library of Archbishop’s House and cried there like a child for sheer loneliness,' Bishop Crowley wrote in Basil Hume: Ten Years On.